Changing global diets is vital to reducing climate change

Aug 31, 2014

A new study, published today in Nature Climate Change, suggests that – if current trends continue – food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050.

The study's authors say we should all think carefully about the food we choose and its environmental impact. A shift to healthier diets across the world is just one of a number of actions that need to be taken to avoid dangerous climate change and ensure there is enough food for all.

As populations rise and global tastes shift towards meat-heavy Western diets, increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demands of what is expected to be 9.6 billion people - making it necessary to bring more land into cultivation.

This will come at a high price, warn the authors, as the deforestation will increase carbon emissions as well as biodiversity loss, and increased livestock production will raise methane levels. They argue that current food demand trends must change through reducing waste and encouraging balanced diets.

If we maintain 'business as usual', say the authors, then by 2050 cropland will have expanded by 42% and fertiliser use increased sharply by 45% over 2009 levels. A further tenth of the world's pristine tropical forests would disappear over the next 35 years.

The study shows that increased deforestation, fertilizer use and livestock methane emissions are likely to cause GHG from food production to increase by almost 80%. This will put emissions from food production alone roughly equal to the target greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 for the entire global economy.

The study's authors write that halving the amount of food waste and managing demand for particularly environmentally-damaging food products by changing global diets should be key aims that, if achieved, might mitigate some of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.

"There are basic laws of biophysics that we cannot evade," said lead researcher Bojana Bajzelj from the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering, who authored the study with colleagues from Cambridge's departments of Geography and Plant Sciences as well as the University of Aberdeen's Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

"The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3%, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans. The losses at each stage are large, and as humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and land cover conversion, and releasing more greenhouse gases. Agricultural practices are not necessarily at fault here – but our choice of food is," said Bajzelj.

"It is imperative to find ways to achieve global food security without expanding crop or pastureland. Food production is a main driver of biodiversity loss and a large contributor to climate change and pollution, so our food choices matter."

The team analysed evidence such as land use, land suitability and agricultural biomass data to create a robust model that compares different scenarios for 2050, including scenarios based on maintaining current trends.

One scenario investigated by the team is on the supply side: the closing of 'yield gaps'. Gaps between crop yields achieved in 'best practice' farming and the actual average yields exist all over the world, but are widest in developing countries – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers say that closing these gaps through sustainable intensification of farming should be actively pursued.

But even with the yield gaps closed, projected food demand will still require additional land – so the impact on GHG emissions and biodiversity remains. Bajzelj points out that higher yields will also require more mineral fertiliser use and increased water demand for irrigation.

Food waste, another scenario analysed by the team, occurs at all stages in the food chain. In developing countries, poor storage and transportation cause waste; in the west, wasteful consumption is rife. "The latter is in many ways worse because the wasted food products have already undergone various transformations that require input of other resources, especially energy," said Bajzelj.

Yield gap closure alone still showed a greenhouse gas increase of just over 40% by 2050. Closing yield gaps and halving food waste still showed a small increase of 2% in greenhouse gas emissions. When healthy diets were added, the model suggests that all three measures combined result in agricultural GHG levels almost halving from their 2009 level – dropping 48%.

"Western diets are increasingly characterised by excessive consumption of food, including that of emission-intensive meat and dairy products. We tested a scenario where all countries were assumed to achieve an average balanced diet - without excessive consumption of sugars, fats, and meat products. This significantly reduced the pressures on the environment even further," said the team.

The 'average' balanced diet used in the study is a relatively achievable goal for most. For example, the figures included two 85g portions of red meat and five eggs per week, as well as a portion of poultry a day.

"This is not a radical vegetarian argument; it is an argument about eating meat in sensible amounts as part of healthy, balanced diets," said Cambridge co-author Prof Keith Richards. "Managing the demand better, for example by focusing on health education, would bring double benefits – maintaining healthy populations, and greatly reducing critical pressures on the environment."

Co-author Prof Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen said: "unless we make some serious changes in food consumption trends, we would have to completely de-carbonise the energy and industry sectors to stay within emissions budgets that avoid dangerous climate change. That is practically impossible – so, as well as encouraging sustainable agriculture, we need to re-think what we eat."

Improving crop yields using sustainable methods could cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 12% per calorie produced according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. At the ...

Livestock production is responsible for 12% of human-related greenhouse gas emissions, primarily coming from land use change and deforestation caused by expansion of agriculture, as well as methane released ...

Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions ...

The UN food agency FAO on Friday predicted that global farming will move increasingly towards meat and milk production and away from traditional rice and grain agriculture in line with changing consumer tastes.

Yosemite National Park is bracing for its driest year on record, with visitor bureaus downplaying the allure of the park's most famous waterfall and instead touting the park as a destination for hiking, bicycling and photography.

A new stream-based monitoring system recently discovered high levels of methane in a Pennsylvania stream near the site of a reported Marcellus shale gas well leak, according to researchers at Penn State and the U.S. Geological ...

A team led by Washington State University researchers has found that methane emissions from local natural gas distribution systems in cities and towns throughout the U.S. have decreased in the past 20 years ...

In the first-of-its-kind study of the environmental effects of hydropeaking, that is releasing water at hydropower dams to meet peak daily electricity demand, two University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers ...

With the advent of a transformed economy based upon thermonuclear fusion energy fueled by He 3 mined on the moon (towards which China is advancing), all these ludicrous doomsday scenarios will be properly consigned to the trash.

When are the liberals going to stop beating this dead horse? Global temperatures have not increased for 20 years. The polar ice caps have increased 41% in the last 2 years. (Didn't read about it in the liberal media? Of course not.) Jobs and growth are not killing the planet, liberals are. California puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the power plants combined for 5 years. What is done about it? Nothing. SO its a fund raising scare tactic that only the desperate continue to believe. Don 't you think its shameful to delude people with such a terrifying threat that doesn't exist? Its shameful. Liberals at work.

Eating less meat is probably not such a hardship. And the first instances of labgrown meat are already done (though the taste, currently, seems to be a less than optimal).

But I guess moving to labgrown meat in the future would bring all kinds of benefits (ecological, probably economical - and even possibly in terms of some religious issues)

For some time I've moved to a diet with less meat (and the meat I eat being of higher quality), and it works well without any kinds of cravings. Though I imagine going full vegetarian would not be fun.

Diet has far less impact on climate and other anthropogenic environmental impacts than the rise (continuing at 1.3%/yr.) in the human population beyond its' critical resources and sustainable limits. One way or another there will be a dramatic reduction in population related to critical resource shortages - likely in the next two to three decades. Whether its planned and benevolent, or chaotic - relatively sudden (pandemic or war, or both - bioweapon war), painful and violent depends on us and how soon we globally address our overpopulation disaster. Dan Brown's fictional take on the subject in "Inferno" while not his best book is interesting in that the recognition of solving the overpopulation disaster is now a mainstream concern - at least among the literate. "Inferno's" solution is not a bad idea - whether technically feasible (at a lot levels) or not.

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.